I May Have Missed My Prince Charming
In this episode, Christy posts a Missed Connection for her prince charming that never was. Quentin drives hundreds of miles on a gut feeling and wonders if he walked into a trap.
The Missed Connections Podcast delves into the heartwarming, bizarre, and sometimes poignant real-life stories from Craigslist's Missed Connections section.
Each episode uncovers the hidden narratives behind fleeting encounters, exploring the emotions and what-ifs of people searching for lost chances.
In this episode, Even responds to a Missed Connections post made by a secret admirer, and we explore the darker history of personal ads.
Listen by clicking the link above. Or, if you're into podcast transcripts, by all means, read on.
Speaker 1 Lady in the line, 7-Eleven, you were standing in line when I walked in, you made eye contact with me, and we smiled. You were very beautiful.
Speaker 2 Athletic, built gentleman alone in the car, turning left, you looked once, as did I, and I noticed you looked again. I meant nothing sexual. I was having a horrible day. Thank you for being kind with a nod. Long shot, but searching.
Speaker 3 We met three months ago. Your name is Tom. You drove an Alexis. My name is Richard. It's a long shot, but I have to try.
Elyse These are posts from Craigslist Missed Connections, and you're listening to the Missed Connections podcast. We're your hosts, Elyse—
Elena —and Elena. Each episode uncovers the hidden narratives behind fleeting encounters, exploring the emotions and what-ifs of people searching for lost chances. Join us as we delve into stories from the infamous Craigslist section, as we feature interviews with real people who have found connections using this platform. These stories are not rehearsed, and the voices you hear are not actors. Join us as we navigate through love, serendipity, and the human desire for connection, one missed connection at a time.
Elyse For hundreds of years, humans have used current media to look for love. In the 18th century, one would pay a fee to take out a personal ad in a newspaper or magazine. Personal ads are private advertisements containing a short message in which a person seeks to find another person. Personal ads gave everyone a voice, or at least those who could pay for them, even eventually women. Author and historian Francesca Bowman explains how the bold women who decided to post ads stood out from the norm.
Francesca Bowman Rather than sitting at home and waiting for a husband to come pick you, to actually go out there and look for someone, was amazing. So I agree with that sense of people being very active in looking for love.
Elena In the early 18th century, the freedom for anyone to look for love through personal ads caused chaos. The idea of anyone hooking up with anyone threatened the carefully crafted institution of marriage and everything that went with it.
Francesca Bowman Civilization will collapse, because it means the state loses control. The church loses control. Money can go anywhere. Property can go anywhere. You're not just keeping it all in the same families, being passed down by generations. Like, oh my god, imagine the ramifications of that for the Missed Connection ads, you know, it could be anyone.
Christy I feel like anything is possible for anybody.
Elyse Meet Christy, a 28-year-old single mom living in Colorado. She was taking time to heal from her recent divorce, and would turn to the Missed Connections page periodically for a laugh.
Christy I always found them funny. I didn't have a pattern to which I would check them—would just mostly be in the evening time when I was bored or alone.
Elena One night, while at a friend's house, Christy was scrolling through the Missed Connections page. Once again, filled with some wine and the feeling of disappointment with men in her life, she decided to make a post.
Christy I just needed somebody to hear my sadness, you know, and hear my disappointment. And I didn't write it with the intention of meeting anybody. I lived in a really small town in Colorado at that time, and there weren't really a lot of good suitors, in my opinion. Plus, I really wanted to have some time to myself to recoup from my previous relationship. I just decided to post up there a little something about how I may have missed my Prince Charming, or the person I'm supposed to be with in this part of my life, or maybe I'm just to be single and that's it, but if for some reason I were to find him, he would probably find me dancing in the grocery store in the organic produce aisle or walking by the lake.
Elena Christy did not expect her post to be so popular with the many responses she was receiving back. Some were keeping her entertained, while others made her feel more disappointed.
Christy I do remember there was a man who was a single father, and he was telling me how he was my prince charming, and I needed to come be with him. And other posts, mostly people looking for sex, letting me know that they were interested in pleasing me in other ways, not emotionally. But I remember feeling disgusted by most of them and disappointed and not interested in any way until I read Quentin's email, which was a poem that he wrote.
Quentin's Story
Quentin I cannot begin to remember that poem, and I bet I'd be much too embarrassed to recite it, but it's like, Yo girl, I was at a Taco Bell. We both got a Mountain Dew. I felt like it was a connection.
Elena Meet Quentin. At the time, he was 32 and just like Christy, Quentin found amusement in the Missed Connections page.
Quentin I was always just curious, like, what was behind some of these? Because sometimes you could feel someone was feeling really cool. Feeling really, really passionately about things. And I was just wondering what their life might have been like, like, what kind of environment were they sitting in when they wrote that? Just try to imagine what was going through their mind on some of them, mostly just kind of like a study of humans and their habits on the internet, I guess.
Elena Quentin was going to school in Southern California and was on break, visiting his dad in New Mexico. He didn't find that there was much to do there, and was bored.
Quentin So that's why I was cruising through the Missed Connections. And I ended up continuing to expand the region, because there wasn't a lot of Missed Connections in my area. They didn't really start becoming heavier until I started to get into the western slope of Colorado, where Christy was living. I really liked what she had to say in there. She's talking about how she just liked to basically go around town and live her life, and just liked to listen to '90s grunge. And you know, when she had her dog with her daughter and was buying organic food, I don't know. I just felt kind of drawn towards it overall. I'm pretty sensitive to people's energy, even through messaging and text messages. And really, I'm able to get a feel for people. So I just felt really strongly about that. And I just really wanted somebody to chat with.
The Connection
Elyse Christy was touched by the beautiful words that Quentin had written to her in his poem.
Christy I felt like this person on the other end was full of emotion that was loving, and I thought it was sexy, and I felt special, like they were for me; they're very personal and for me. And I was like, Wow, thank you. He was the only person I emailed. I was like, Hey, you seem kind of cool. What's up?
Quentin I often write a poem to express myself in certain ways. So one of the things I know about ladies is they do like poetry. So I'm gonna write this poem. She's gonna be like, Oh, he wrote this poem. That's kind of probably what I was imagining there.
Christy We exchanged several emails back and forth for a short period of time, I would say, a week or so, and then we started chatting on the phone almost every single night. I really enjoyed his voice.
Quentin It's exciting to hear a new voice. You know, I could just hear a richness, a robustness to her voice, and it was really attractive to me.
The First Meeting
Elena After talking almost every single day for about a month, Quentin and Christy decided that it was time to meet.
Christy I was traveling to California to be with my family for the holidays, and he was coming back from his dad's house to go back to school, and we met on my birthday at my aunt's house.
Quentin The house where it's at is kind of on this little bit of property there. I wasn't entirely sure that I was at the right place. And as I'm walking up there, I'm realizing that, you know, this could be a bad situation.
Christy He wasn't physically exactly what I expected. It wasn't necessarily a bad thing. But when we hugged each other for the first time, I just felt really safe and warm, and I'd actually never really felt that way before with anybody, just a sense of, I don't know, like instant love. The first person he met was my little sister, who was with me just to make sure he wasn't too weird.
Elyse Christy's younger sister had to hold on to the secret that the two had only recently met each other through a Craigslist ad.
Christy And then I just brought him into my family home. I was like, Come hang out. And we sat on the couch in the living room with the Christmas tree lights. That's it. We didn't have any other lights going on, and we just talked about our past and what we want for our future, our dreams, things that we love and don't love. So he drove around a Euro van. He named it Gretchen. He slept in the Euro van that evening, and the next morning, you know, I had him come in, and my whole family was there, and I have, it's complicated, but there's 10 siblings, you know, everybody gathers in the kitchen, and then here's this strange man nobody's ever met. Just introduced him as my friend. The rest of my family didn't know how I really felt about him, so they're like, Oh, okay, Christy brought a friend here. They didn't know I met him off the internet, and that the night before was the first time I saw him in person. But Quentin's like, Let's make some breakfast. And he made pancakes for like, you know, 20 people that morning, and just chatted it up with my family, and my family was very accepting of him. They were a little concerned about me getting into relationships so quickly, but it didn't feel that way for me. Once I met him, I didn't feel like, Oh my gosh, I shouldn't be doing this. It felt very comfortable.
Quentin I figured I'd chat for a while. It would probably go, I'd probably go home later that night. But no, I actually did not end up sleeping in the van that night.
Elena Quentin was upgraded from sleeping in his van to sleeping on the couch.
Christy I didn't want him to go. I felt to myself that I needed to keep this guy here for a little bit with me, because he felt so nice to be around and so respectful. He wasn't trying to touch my body or move past us just speaking and being near each other. And I really found that sexy.
Quentin But I think that was probably just more I was a little bit nervous at first. It probably took me a couple of hours to just kind of relax more.
Elyse Once nighttime hit, the house became very quiet and dark.
Quentin So all I see, like, all these rooms, it's just quiet. Everybody's sleeping. So I just imagine people are just watching us sitting at the tree. And I was just kind of wondering, like, what's going on? You know me? I'm like, what's happening here? Is everything cool? Did I keep my kidneys? I don't know.
Next Episode Preview
Elyse Next time on Missed Connections.
Quentin So she had the wrong time on the plane. The plane had already left, like the day before, or two days before, or something like that.
Christy Really distracted. There was just so many awesome things happening during that time.
Quentin And so she's like, Well, I guess I'm just gonna buy me a new ticket or something like that, and like, You gotta do that, I'll just drive you.
Credits
Missed Connections is a Weather Tomorrow production, written and produced by Elena Pizz0 and Elyse Wild. If you have missed connections you'd like to share, please reach out at missconnectionspodofficial@gmail.com.